Here's a more detailed breakdown of CarrSports' revenue numbers in their UAB report. It's obviously rough (I haven't spent all that long on it) but I think it's overall pretty reasonable.

Before getting into the numbers, I'll note that there's some growth calculations and trending built into the model, but on a basic level you can really evaluate it by digging into their projected 2015-2016 numbers (the first year without football).

Let's start with some high level summary numbers (there are some minor rounding differences), comparing with to without football:

Revenue:
Contracts and ticket sales drop from $7.2M to $3.2M
Philanthropy drops from $2.5M to $2.1M
"Institutional Subsidy" stays at an even $14.5M
Student fees stay at an even $5.8M
Overall drops from $30.0M to $25.6M

Expenses:
Scholarships drop from $10.3M to $7.6M
Salaries drop from $13.4M to $9.6M
"Other" expenses (sports ops, support systems, recruiting, equipment) drop from $11.4M to $8.1M
Overall drops from $35.1M to $25.3M

On the revenue side, there are some in my mind VERY serious issues with the assumptions so far:

1) The idea that student fees would not move at all seems incredibly suspicious to me. The only way this makes any sense at all is if the students have basically zero rights to protest or change the fees they pay. And even there, you'd have to expect that students would be pissed at the loss of football, which means that they're now getting a LOT less for what they're paying for (per http://www.scribd.com/doc/73077097/Stadium-Business-Plan#scribd , one key thing that students get for their student fees is the ability to buy season tickets at $25 per ticket, which is kind of a big deal, especially if they're paying in the ballpark of $500 a year in athletics fees [11k undergrads, $5.8M in fees]). I simply don't think it's politically feasible for fees to not drop at all in this situation.

Maybe UAB AD can gain a big profit off the backs of the students (essentially what they project by making this assumption), but I sure wouldn't bank on it. Instead, I'd assume that fees would drop AT LEAST 20% (and that might be light). So of the "we save $5.5M in 2015-2016 from dropping football" argument, that's at least a million of it out the window.

2) Speaking of strangely fixed revenue assumptions, CarrSports also assumed that "Institutional Subsidy" (in quotes for a reason - it's an accounting line where the numbers are basically made up) would be fixed at $14.5M with or without football. With football, UAB would have $14.5 of "subsidy" compared to $10.3M of scholarships. Essentially, a reasonable way to look at it is that UAB would be foregoing $10.3M of tuition and coughing up a direct infusion of $4.2M cash in the "FBS" scenario.

How about without football? There, the scholarships drop to $7.6M, so UAB would instead be foregoing $7.6M of tuition and coughing up $6.9M cash. In other words, they're paying $2.7M more of direct cash in that scenario. Unless you believe that the true cost to UAB (as a university, not as an athletic department) of an education is the value of the scholarship (which is intuitively silly, and Andy Schwarz among others have explained why in detail many times), of you believe that UAB as a university can easily replace the foregone tuition revenue from cut scholarships with students paying full sticker price, that's just an awfully weird projected outcome. In note 1, UAB AD projects increased profits off the backs of the students, while here they're projecting increased profits off the back of the university itself.

A reasonably conservative projection would be that UAB continues to forego tuition for all their scholarships, but pays the same amount of direct cash to the AD. If you want to be more aggressive and argue that cutting the foregone tuition for those spots is still worth SOMETHING, then you can (arbitrarily) select something like the midpoint and cut the "Institutional Support" number by say $1.3M.

That said, I'd note that, like with the students, UAB as a university would be getting a whole lot less for their "Institutional Support" dollars without football, since just as it's valued by most student bodies, it's typically an important part of a university's marketing and exposure. You could VERY plausibly argue that UAB as a university would have to sink at least a few million into additional marketing and advertising to replace what they're currently getting from football. So I'd actually argue you should make the full adjustment and slice out the full $2.7M cash difference. That, plus fixing the student fee assumption, takes you from $5.5M saved to around $1.8M saved, and suddenly it doesn't look anywhere near as beneficial a decision as CarrSports represented it to be.

3) Speaking of "scholarship" costs, let's dig into that number a bit. CarrSports claims that UAB would be paying $2.9M in 2015-2016 over presumably 85 scholarships (the NCAA limit), which works out to $34.4k per player.

That's pretty strange, since UAB's own website ( https://www.uab.edu/students/paying-for-uab/college-costs/us-current ) projects costs to be $27.8-$33.0k per year for a 15 credit hour per semester out of state student (unsurprisingly, it costs substantially less for students taking 12 credit hours and/or in-state students). In other words, CarrSports projects that scholarships would cost MORE than than the highest $ value shown on the UAB table, despite the fact that many of their players are likely taking materially lower than 15 credit hours, and despite the fact that about half of the UAB players (see roster at http://www.uabsports.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/albr-m-footbl-mtt.html ) are in-state, not out of state.

A more defensible calculation would assume some kind of mid-point between 12 and 15 hours, and in-state vs out of state. Which would then get you something like an even $23.0k, which over 85 players is about a full million less. In other words, their projection that football scholarhips cost $2.9M in 2015-2016 should really be more like $1.9M. We've already sort of addressed scholarships and "institutional support" numbers in point 2, so I won't adjust downward their savings for this, but I would point out that it's a really big red flag when it comes to taking their math seriously.

4) There are also a boatload of other revenue items that don't seem to have been evaluated in light of this move (and these are, for the most part, REALLY obvious items):

Pouring Rights - CarrSports projects unchanged at $250k per year. This compares to http://www.scribd.com/doc/73077097/Stadium-Business-Plan#scribd, which assumed an even $150k for CFB and $150k per year in MBB. If you interpret that is revenue being evenly split between the two, that's a $125k per year cut

"EF Support" - I read this as being the Educational Foundation. CarrSports assumes this is unchanged at $610k. That seems strange given that scholarship expenses went down 30%. I'd have to assume that this line goes down 30% as well, which is more or less a $180k cut.

"CUSA Growth Supplement" - I have zero clue what this actually is. But without football, UAB is no longer a full member like all the other league members. I'd be very hesitant to just assume it stays flat. I think it's reasonable to assume a 30% cut, which is another $80k of revenue gone.

NCAA Sport Sponsorship - they're cutting 3 sports, which per https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/2013-14%20Revenue%20Distribution%20Plan.pdf (page 10), should be a $99,600 cut. Let's call it an even $100k. I'll note that this is an approximation since the full details aren't clear. But it's awfully weird of them to flat-out ignore it entirely.

NCAA SAF - I'm assuming it's the Student Assistance Fund ( http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/2013+Student+Assistance+Fund.pdf ). This seems to be potentially allocated on a per player basis. Assuming that's correct, then I'd have to assume that a 30% cut (proportional to scholarship reduction) is appropriate, which means a $70k cut.

Net-net, these five items combine for a $555k cut. We'd reduced the "savings from dropping football" down to $1.8M previously, this gets it to about a $1.25M number.

Or alternatively, the CarrSports projection had revenue with football at $30M even, and without football at $25.6M. I instead have revenue without football at around $21.3M, a reduction of about $8.7M compared to CarrSports' projected expense reduction of $9.9M.

Now, I'd note that what I've done is a bunch of relatively rough calculations and assumptions myself. But I think that's SUBSTANTIALLY more accurate than what CarrSports did. And that's without even touching the expense side and anything weird that might be in those numbers.

PS CarrSports explicitly projects that in the "keeping football" scenario, UAB would spend an extra $1.3M a year on paying full cost of attendance (COA). However, there is NOTHING that actually mandates UAB do this. Obviously it would hurt their competitive position not to do this, but it's flat-out false to imply that they are in any way forced to do this.

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